Medicine Research

Andrew Feng is a bright 6-year-old boy who loves to play the online strategy game Clash of the Clans and go trick-or-treating on Halloween. This Halloween, however, he will be undergoing surgery to remove a benign growth from one of his ribs.

Naturally, Andrew’s parents are a little anxious. This will be their son’s first operation and he might have to stay overnight at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.

Addiction comes in many forms: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling have been the types that traditionally plagued society.

In recent years, the proliferation of technology has led to the rise of addiction to the internet and computer gaming. Even the promotion of a healthy lifestyle has led some to become hooked on exercise.

But do all addictions operate by the same biological mechanism? And is addiction an individual's choice or a disease of the brain?

Researchers from Quebec are big winners in a contest organized by Genome Canada in collaboration with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) after having been awarded 60% of the federal funds granted during this Canada-wide competition aimed at selecting the best genomics and personalized health research projects.

The Government of Québec announced today a $10 million investment in the Personalized Medicine Partnership for Cancer (PMPC). This public-private partnership will be focused on establishing an integrated approach for the development and implementation of clinical biomarkers and other personalized healthcare solutions to improve the outcome and cost-efficiency of healthcare services provided to cancer patients in the province of Québec and abroad.

Addiction to cigarettes, drugs and other stimulants has been linked in the past to the brain’s frontal lobes, but now there is scientific evidence that indicates where in the frontal cortex addiction takes hold and how. Addiction could be a result of abnormal communication between two areas of the frontal lobes linked to decision-making. The discovery will undoubtedly stimulate clinical work on new therapies for millions of people who suffer from addiction.

McGill University’s board of governors has adopted a resolution demanding the Quebec government withdraw the cuts it is imposing on universities and restore the funding that was in place, saying the government’s action is “excessive and injurious” to the university.

Principal Heather Munroe-Blum has sent a message to the McGill community saying the university will take every measure possible to persuade the government “to withdraw these harmful and ill-timed cuts.”

Prescription medications remain one of the most common causes of severe adverse reactions in clinical medicine, accounting for thousands of deaths annually in Canada. The urgent need for rigorous, scientific drug safety research has been clearly understood for decades, but lacked national coordination until the arrival of the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES), which today released its first report documenting progress towards its goal of creating a fully operational system for rapid assessment of adverse drug effects in Canada.

"Despite high per-capita spending, health care in Canada consistently underperforms, according to the Commonwealth Fund, which tracks indicators for accessibility, timeliness and outcomes across a number of developed countries. The system that is straining to meet demand today will face an even higher burden in the years ahead, as the population ages. A number of Canadian business schools are looking to meet this challenge by educating future health care managers to bring new perspectives to old problems.

We’ve known for a while that the vestibular system in the inner ear is responsible for helping us keep our balance. And while researchers have already developed a basic understanding of how the brain constructs our perceptions of ourselves in motion, until now no one has understood the crucial step by which the neurons in the brain select the information needed to do so.